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CBJ
Jun 12, 2014, 8:53 PM
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Registered: Jul 17, 2013
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Climbing Business Journal is putting together an article about ROUTESETTING SOFTWARE and would love to hear what tools commercial climbing gyms are using today.
If you would be willing to share your experience with the software your gym uses, please comment below or send me a note on our contact form:
http://www.climbingbusinessjournal.com/contact/
Thank you!
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funk
Jun 13, 2014, 7:39 PM
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sounds like a waste of time.
a good route setter climbs outside and understands movement.
i highly doubt that can be captured in a program.
CBJ has an agenda and that's fine, but to suggest that a program do as well as an experienced setter's intuition is plain cray-cray. Maybe it's good for an inexperienced crew of setters.
I'm thinking the gym that i sometimes climb at could benefit from software - there's a handful of bad->mediocre setters who seem very butt hurt when you give creative criticism (none of which climb outside, at all).
(This post was edited by funk on Jun 13, 2014, 7:40 PM)
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CBJ
Jun 13, 2014, 8:32 PM
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I think you are misunderstanding what the software is for. Routesetting software is a management tool to track when routes/boulders were set and by whom, and tracks the gym's overall grade distribution and age of inventory.
When you have a big gym with hundreds of routes/boulders its not something you can efficiently do in your head or on paper. Many gyms use excel spreadsheets, but a few are using more complex programs that provide robust reporting. We want to learn more about these tools and share best practices with gyms across the country.
Thanks.
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marc801
Jun 14, 2014, 2:41 PM
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funk wrote: sounds like a waste of time. a good route setter climbs outside and understands movement. i highly doubt that can be captured in a program. CBJ has an agenda and that's fine, but to suggest that a program do as well as an experienced setter's intuition is plain cray-cray. Maybe it's good for an inexperienced crew of setters. I'm thinking the gym that i sometimes climb at could benefit from software - there's a handful of bad->mediocre setters who seem very butt hurt when you give creative criticism (none of which climb outside, at all).
Quoted for the historic record.
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jt512
Jun 14, 2014, 9:37 PM
Post #5 of 13
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CBJ wrote: Climbing Business Journal is putting together an article about ROUTESETTING SOFTWARE and would love to hear what tools commercial climbing gyms are using today. If you would be willing to share your experience with the software your gym uses, please comment below or send me a note on our contact form: http://www.climbingbusinessjournal.com/contact/ Thank you!
The average 14-year-old could program an MS Access database to perform this function with about a half-day's effort. I don't know which is lamer: that gyms are actually buying commercial software to do this, or that your publication is writing an article about it.
(This post was edited by jt512 on Jun 14, 2014, 9:39 PM)
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petsfed
Jun 15, 2014, 4:19 PM
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The facility I work at uses an excel spreadsheet that I brewed up in an afternoon. Of course, we only have about 90 taped routes, both roped and bouldering, so I'm not sure access is worth the added bother.
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lena_chita
Moderator
Jun 16, 2014, 2:32 PM
Post #7 of 13
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Registered: Jun 27, 2006
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CBJ wrote: I think you are misunderstanding what the software is for. Routesetting software is a management tool to track when routes/boulders were set and by whom, and tracks the gym's overall grade distribution and age of inventory. When you have a big gym with hundreds of routes/boulders its not something you can efficiently do in your head or on paper. Many gyms use excel spreadsheets, but a few are using more complex programs that provide robust reporting. We want to learn more about these tools and share best practices with gyms across the country. Thanks.
Excel spreadsheet works quite nicely for 'hundreds' of entries, you can sort it by date, or difficulty, or by setter, or any other way you want, I can't see why a more fancy specialized program would be needed. (And no, our gym does not use anything fancier than excel)
IMO, the main problem with the route-setting database is not the program, it is the person who enters the information into the program. If the gym has someone who keeps it up to date, great. If not, no fancy program will help.
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funk
Jun 16, 2014, 7:21 PM
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Registered: Nov 9, 2008
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drop that shit into a pivot table and blow their minds. Export it into something fancy like Tableau and watch the panties drop.
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lena_chita
Moderator
Jun 16, 2014, 8:19 PM
Post #10 of 13
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funk wrote: drop that shit into a pivot table and blow their minds. Export it into something fancy like Tableau and watch the panties drop.
Why would i need to?
If you step back, the question is, regardless of what software is used, what is the purpose of keeping a route database?
-- Is it a housekeeping tool, to help route-setters know which routes have been up for a long time, what needs to be stripped, which routes are popular/get good feedback/get climbed a lot?
-Is it a customer-enticement tool? (big flashy screen at the gym entrance, or an iphone app that tell you how many new routes, in what grade, and on which walls, went up in the past week?)
For the first one, Excel will work, and MS Access would be slightly better.
For the second, you probably need someone to write some code, and it can probably get improved with time to better, and fancier, and more expensive version.
And while I cannot see a gym, any gym, getting so big that you couldn't find just by walking around and looking at walls that there are some changes since your last visit, I have been proven wrong multiple times in my assumption of how much handholding and digest do people need and want.
I also have been in the presence younger climbers who, when looking for a gas station off the highway, ask Siri to find it, instead of looking at the signs. Including, literally, a situation where I turned off an exit to a brightly illuminated, clearly open gas station that was visible from the highway, while the nose-in-iPhone guy was saying, no-no-no, there is nothing at this exit, you need to go 5 miles to the next one.
So, I would bet that there would be apps that the gym would offer to their customers, that will send you a notification when a route in your selected grade, set by your preferred route-setter, appears in the shiny mega-gym on your favorite wall section.
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